some Bear Blog titles I recently enjoyed
Perusing the Bear Blog Discovery Feed has become a part of my daily routine (usually during my commute / on the train). Semi-intentionally, I've established a mini-practice that I call "Bear Blog picks", where I scroll through the "Most Recent" section (or use the "Random" function) and open the first five posts that draw my attention. Since the Discovery Feed doesn't support images or videos, it's the titles that decide whether or not I look at the post.
This post is not intended to be an attempt at an analysis for what the "best-for-engagement" Bear Blog titles look like. It's just a list of titles I personally was drawn to for one reason or the other (maybe as a reference for my own title-crafting in the future). It also concerns only the titles, not the contents of the posts. For some of these, I enjoyed the posts themselves too. For others, I just skimmed, shrugged, and moved on.
The categories
- Resonant: Titles that evoke a strong mental image, feel poetic, or resonate with me on some deeper level (feeling relatable, aligned with my current state of mind etc)
- Amusing: Titles that are fun to read or make me chuckle (i.e. silently push air through my nose) a bit
- Intriguing: Titles that seem to hint at an interesting post, either conceptually or content-wise
- Practical: Titles that seem like the post will be useful to me in a "hands-on" kind of way
The list
It's raining somewhere else [Photos].
- Category: Evocative
- I like how this title highlights the connectedness of the worlds and our lives. It's not raining where the author is at the moment. Something - maybe dark clouds on the horizon, the smell of rain in the air, etc - tells them that it's raining somewhere. But they can't pinpoint where exactly. It's the weather equivalent of hearing music that's being played in another room.
Am I my own horse?
- Category: AmusingIntriguing
- I love me some idiosyncratic metaphors that seem strange or far-fetched from an outside perspective but make perfect sense to the author. They open up interesting windows into the minds of others, and can make you think about yourself or the world in a slightly different way.
Zen sickness and other ailments of the mind and body
- Category: Intriguing
- What is "Zen sickness?" I want to know! I also like the slightly humorous tone that comes with the "X and other Y" phrasing.
ow!!!! my leg
- Category: Amusing
- The over-punctuation after the "ow", coupled with the lack of punctuation afterwards makes this one feel visceral; you can practically hear the author howling in pain and then muttering the second part while clutching their leg. (Get well soon, by the way.)
The failing minimalist tries again
- Category: ResonantPractical
- The title feels very literary to me, like a sub-heading in a small collection of essays, perhaps? It's also resonant because I too have an on-and-off relationship with the philosophy / lifestyle of minimalism, and practical because I might learn something from reading someone else's perspective and putting that knowledge to use somehow.
Word of the day: bathetic
- Category: PracticalIntriguing
- Recently, I've been interested in expanding my active vocabulary and generally becoming a better / more eloquent speaker. So posts like this are right up my alley. This one also has the intriguing element to it where you think "don't they mean pathetic?"
We still have the moon
- Category: Resonant
- With all the chaos in the world, you somethings feel like there are no constants anymore, no neutral parties, no anchors of calm. But there are, and the moon is a symbol for one of them. It just sits there out in Earth's orbit, calmly uncaring, but not uninviting. A cold, dark, and very gentle place.
battling my own bullshit
- Category: AmusingResonant
- A prime example of the amusing/evocative hybrid: The type of title that makes me think "haha, yeah, I think I get you man." It also evokes a vague image of some kind of anime fight scene for me where the author is having a ridiculously cool, coreographed fight with a representation of their bullshit.
Resisting thought patterns
- Category: Intriguing
- I'm a fan of thought experiments - not "thought hacking" in the productivity bro sense, but trying on something different for size and exploring the ways it makes you think. Recognising thought patterns and actively (or passively?) resisting them falls under this umbrella.
the cruelty of want.txt
- Category: ResonantIntriguing
- What a poetic title, contrasted against the mechanical, coldly technical feel of the ".txt" file extension. It feels very Buddhist-coded, and made me really want to read the text attached to it (I ended up really liking the post itself for this one, too. It's a real meditation piece that you can re-read multiple times and use as a starting point for self-reflection).